


like lighting calls to thunder, so you call to me

by thursdayknight



Series: like canon but gayer 'verse [4]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Asexual Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove Comes Back, Billy Hargrove Has Powers, Billy and Dustin are friends, Dustin Henderson Is the Best, Dustin Henderson is a Good Friend, Established Relationship, Fighting Monsters, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Monster Hunters, No Porn, Post Season 3, Scenes in a Hospital, Soft Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21526816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thursdayknight/pseuds/thursdayknight
Summary: Billy slides into the chair by the bed and feels his heart pick up speed, faster and faster and faster, you-did-this, you-did-this, you-did-this, your-fault, your-fault, your-fault. Every beat sends the words crashing into his brain to explode there like fireworks until he has to close his eyes against the sharp sting of seeing Steve like this."I'm so sorry, Steve," he says, quiet, somehow. Slow, even as his heart continues to go faster, faster, faster, you-did-this, you-did-this, you-did-this,  your-fault, your-fault, your-fault.
Relationships: Steve Harrington/Billy Hargrove
Series: like canon but gayer 'verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551490
Comments: 4
Kudos: 92





	like lighting calls to thunder, so you call to me

There's someone kicking at his foot and Billy looks up from his spot curled up into himself in his chair to see if it's Eleven, but instead finds Henderson staring at him. 

Billy wants to say something mean, something sharp and biting but instead he just puts his head back behind his knees. He's too tired for this. He can't deal and Henderson can leave or he can stay but Billy is too tired to care right now. 

But for some reason, Henderson chooses to stay, hopping up on the chair next to Billy and putting a hand on his knee that Billy wants to bite off but again, he's too tired so he just… sorta leaves it there. 

"So…" Henderson says dryly, "Steve's in his room, bawling his eyes out, good job there." The words have nowhere near as much bite as they should and Henderson still has his hand on Billy's knee like he's comforting him, like that's something Billy deserves right now. Or ever.

There's something deeply wrong with Henderson.

"What happened?" 

Billy presses his face further into his knees and doesn't say anything so again, Henderson asks, "What happened?" more forcefully this time. 

"Just," Billy breathes out. "Don't ask me, alright?" It's hard enough on a normal day to keep the nastiness inside of him from spilling out, like it takes most of his effort on a good day, it really does and today he's literally having to hold himself together to keep it all inside so he really, really _cannot_ deal with this right now, like he's really gonna fucking lose it any second and he _cannot_ deal.

"Well, Steve can't tell me, so you're going to have to," Dustin says and this time the words have some bite to them and it's a bite that comes with a hard squeeze by the hand on Billy's knee that's just gone from comforting to commanding. 

"Fuck off, Henderson," Billy says.

"No," Henderson says, fierce, and if there's anything Billy truly regrets in this life, it's the day Henderson grew a backbone. 

Still, even as exhausted as he is and as tired as he is, he can't just bow out of a fight, can't just turn tail and run. " _Fuck off, Henderson ,_ " he says again. He drops his his feet to the floor but Henderson's hand stays on his knee. He looks over at the kid and parts his lips just enough to show his teeth and not to smile. 

Henderson doesn't take the bait, though, just keeps that hand on Billy's knee, steady as anything and says, "Billy, _please,_ " and Billy wants to scream at him, he wants to yell at this dumb kid that somewhere along the line became his friend, but then he looks down at Dustin's hand on his knee and he's sunk. 

"Fine!" Billy snaps. He takes a deep breath and works on pushing back the fire that's still burning in his throat, the fire that's been burning him alive ever since he ran out of Steve's room. "I told Steve I loved him." 

"Okay… and?" Dustin says, like he's confused, like he's missing something, which he is. He squeezes Billy's knee like it's the trap door, secret trick way to force Billy into making sense.

"And then I ran away," Billy says.

The temperature in the room feels like it drops a couple of degrees as Dustin spins to look at him head on, dorky hat almost flying off his head as he says, "You did _what_?" 

"I-" Billy starts but Dustin cuts him off. 

"No, _I heard you_ ," Dustin says, shouting. If the kid had a face or a voice capable of sneering or snarling, he'd probably be doing both right now, but he's long since learned from his mistakes and just goes with what he's best at - loud, pitchy shouting. "What I _meant_ was, _why_?"

Billy shrugs. "It's complicated." He drags his knees back up to his chest and buries his face against them so all he can see is blue. Again, Dustin's hand remains on his knee, unmoving and unmoveable.

"Okay, well, then - you -" Dustin splutters, quickly running out of steam. He's developed more of a spine in the past year or so, it's true, but it's also still a new thing and it doesn't always last for all that long. "Just…" Dustin lets out a sharp hiss of breath and this time his hand drops away from Billy.

"Go talk to him or I'm dragging El over from where she's sitting in the cafeteria with Max and I'll get her to give you the sad eyes until you do it," he says. Billy peeks over at him, sees his ridiculous, forced, sunshine bright grin and wants to just hide his face behind his knees for the next thousand years, until they're all dusty, decayed, skinless, meatless corpses. 

He sneaks another look a second later and realizes it probably wouldn't help anyway, even as a dusty (ha!), decayed, skinless, meatless corpse Henderson's default state would probably still somehow include that stupid grin, forced or otherwise. 

No, he's going to have to deal with this. 

"No need to sic El on me, Henderson," Billy says, hands flying out from his legs and body unfurling. "I'll go." 

He gets to his feet and Dustin's still giving him that ridiculous, forced smile so Billy rolls his eyes and says, "You can cut it with the look, it's pathetic, man."

Dustin merely arches an eyebrow at the insult and points a hand towards Steve's room. "Go already," he says, tone not quite sharp enough to cut but definitely sharp enough to poke and to hurt.

"I'm going, I'm going." Billy turns to face down the hall that'll lead him to Steve's room and in that instant he can't help but feel a little like a man walking to the gallows, a man preparing for his death. 

Suddenly, there's a hand on his shoulder. "It'll be okay," Dustin says quietly. 

"Thanks." Billy doesn't really believe him, but he says it anyway. He pauses another second, waits for Dustin to drop his hand, then finally starts walking back towards Steve. 

///

Billy enters Steve's room to find him lying in bed with his eyes closed, just asleep probably, but he's so still and so pale with the way the fading sunlight from the window is hitting him that it sucks all the air from Billy's lungs like they're just gonna shrivel up and die and deprive him of all oxygen until he himself just shrivels up and dies. Like Steve almost died. 

Because Steve almost died and Billy can't draw a proper breath; he's drowning, he's capsized and he's drowning and his lungs are filling with something and it's not air and his heart is racing, it's pitching a fit, screaming at him in retaliation for earlier, when it frosted over, then for the fire after that and now for this. Now there's this and Billy can't breathe and his heart won't stop pounding, won't stop screaming at him _you did this, you did this. This is all your fault, all your fault, he could have gotten away but you did this, you keep him here and you keep him in danger. You did this. You did this. You did this. Your fault._

He slides into the chair by the bed and feels his heart pick up speed, faster and faster and faster, _you-did-this, you-did-this, you-did-this, your-fault, your-fault, your-fault._ Every beat sends the words crashing into his brain to explode there like fireworks until he has to close his eyes against the sharp sting of seeing Steve like this.

"I'm so sorry, Steve," he says, quiet, somehow. Slow, even as his heart continues to go faster, faster, faster, _you-did-this, you-did-this, you-did-this,_ _your-fault, your-fault, your-fault._ Billy wants to cry out with the pain of it, but instead he says, "You shouldn't be here with me, you should've left town ages ago, if you were smart, you'd leave town, leave me. I'm not worth staying for and I really wish you knew that." It's a complete reversal of how he felt earlier, when Steve was looking at him and Billy told him he loved him and wanted to hear him say it back. It's a complete reversal, but it's also the truth. 

Because this is how he'd expected things to look when he was sitting in the emergency room with Eleven, this was how he expected things to look but he'd expected them to _be_ worse. He'd expected, he'd played it out a thousand times in his head, that a doctor would come up to them and say, "You can see him, but there wasn't much we could do," or, "I'm sorry but he didn't make it," or, "We did what we could but we don't know if he'll wake up." 

And if Steve hadn't woken up, if Steve had died, if he'd never gotten to see Steve smiling at him again, never gotten to look into his big, brown eyes and call him "Bambi" or "Pretty Boy" ever again, he doesn't know what he would've done. But even this is too much. Even this should never have happened, which is a fact his heart won't let him forget as it continues its non-stop assault on the rest of his body, beating out the words _your-fault, your-fault, your-fault_ in an increasingly erratic pattern.

"I'm not worth staying for," he says again, still so soft, still so quiet. "I'm not."

This time, Steve responds. "Yes, you are." 

Billy opens his eyes to find Steve staring at him. Steve sits up in the bed a little and slowly raises a hand to Billy's chest, setting his fingers over Billy's heart and for the first time in what feels like his whole life he can breathe, like really, truly breathe. 

"Is this why you ran away earlier?” Steve says. “Because you think that you're dangerous? Because you think it'd be better for me if I left?"

Billy can feel the fire inside him spark back to life and start burning up the edges of his throat again; he doesn't trust himself to speak so instead he just nods. But Steve is right. That's exactly what it was. It actually _wasn't_ any different, after all. 

And the thing is, nobody's ever really bothered to understand Billy before. Nobody's ever really even cared to try, but Steve, not only does Steve try, Steve _actually_ understands him, sees right through him and all his bullshit in a way he's still not used to, in a way he still doesn't really know what to do with, in a way he might _never_ really know what to do with no matter how long Steve is willing to put up with him for.

"Billy…" Steve sighs. "It's the exact opposite. You saved me. Before you I was just gonna…" Steve laughs but it's sharp, jagged. "Marry some girl, work for my father, settle in for the boring, average life that had been set up for me. Instead, I…" He gulps. "Instead I have you and this love I never thought I'd ever have and you… you saved me, okay? You did."

Billy leans into Steve's touch, so aware of everything it's painful - he can't look away from Steve, from his big, brown eyes, so soft in the now near darkness, from his cracked pink lips and he starts to feel his lungs shriveling up again, starts to feel his heart start to scream again and this time it's saying _you-still-aren't-enough, you-still-aren't-enough, you-still-aren't-enough._ The room feels impossibly small, overloaded with the weight of all of the emotion between them. Steve doesn't shy away from any of it, just stretches his hand slightly to dip a finger inside the gold chain that's still always around Billy's neck before sliding his hand back down, pressing his hand and the chain to Billy's skin, to his heart screaming _you-still-aren't-enough, you-still-aren't-enough, you-still-aren't-enough_ and for the first time, Billy doesn't care. He doesn't listen. His heart is wrong. The look in Steve's eyes is what matters.

“I love you, too," Steve says.

Billy's breath hitches in his throat again and his heart stops its relentless wailing scream and instead starts to sing, _Steve loves me, Steve loves me, Steve loves me._

_Steve loves me._

"I love you," Billy says. "So much." 

Steve swallows and this time he looks… determined. "You're not going to run away again, are you?" 

"No," Billy says, voice raw. "I won't ever run away from you again, I promise." 

Steve doesn't quite look like he believes Billy so he says it again. "I promise." He leans in. "I promise." 

He kisses Steve's cheek, tastes the salt left there by his tears and silently decides to make a point of not ever again being the cause of Steve's tears, not if he can help it. "I promise," he says again as he moves to kiss Steve's other cheek. "I promise." He kisses his chin. "I promise." 

"I believe you," Steve says, and Billy kisses Steve's lips, then the bridge of his nose before saying it one last time. 

"I promise." 

Then he leans his forehead against Steve's, closes his eyes and just… breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you liked this! I'm really enjoying writing this series, and asexual Steve. :)
> 
> Also, I have a [tumblr](https://gideongrace.tumblr.com/), if you wanna come yell at me over there about ace stuff or harringrove.


End file.
